deborah shaw | University of Portsmouth (original) (raw)

Papers by deborah shaw

This chapter considers the constraints and possibilities of teaching ‘world and transnational cin... more This chapter considers the constraints and possibilities of teaching ‘world and transnational cinema.’ We take as a case study our own unit, “World and Transnational Cinema” that we co-developed and team-taught between 2007 and 2014, and reflect on choices of film texts and themes. Within the chapter we discuss and interrogate our own choices and knowledge base, our use of the terms ‘world’ and ‘transnational cinema’, and the debates we have had in devising the course. Ideologically, we consider our theoretical choices in the decisions made and our attempts to engage in what Shohat and Stam (2003) have termed ‘the multiculturalist project’, that is to ensure that curriculum (school/university) reflects diversity and does not work to promote the interests of privileged (colonial) dominant classes. We also reflect on our desire to be part of a project to ‘de-Westernise’ Film Studies (Ba, Higbee, 2012), while inhabiting our subject positions as British academics teaching predominantly (white) British students. From a pedagogical position, the political nature of this unit is discussed in relation to ideas of the Hidden Curriculum (Jackson, 1968); the underlying aim being to politicize the student body.

Women’s History Review, 2022

In this article I write on the rift between trans inclusive and gender critical feminists in the ... more In this article I write on the rift between trans inclusive and gender critical feminists in the UK. I consider this division within university culture through a focus on the case of Kathleen Stock. I discuss the coverage of her resignation from the University of Sussex through a focus on The Daily Telegraph. From a trans inclusive feminist viewpoint, I discuss the way her case has been used to spread misinformation around universities, and trans people. I examine the key ideas of gender critical and trans inclusive feminists and present an analysis of concepts of free speech and debate that challenges gender critical beliefs. I end with a call for a way forward to strengthen feminism.

The three amigos, 2016

Children of Men Reviews Metacritic April 21st, 2019 Summary Children of Men envisages a world one... more Children of Men Reviews Metacritic April 21st, 2019 Summary Children of Men envisages a world one generation from now that has fallen into anarchy on the heels of an infertility defect in the population The world s youngest citizen has just died at 18 and humankind is facing the likelihood of its own extinction Set against the backdrop of London torn apart by violence and nationalistic sects the Children of Men envisages a world one

Director Alejandro González Iñárritu and screenwriter and novelist Guillermo Arriaga worked toget... more Director Alejandro González Iñárritu and screenwriter and novelist Guillermo Arriaga worked together on three, highly successful films – Amores perros (2000), 21 Grams (2003) and Babel (2006). Yet, theirs was a troubled partnership and ended in a public feud. Arriaga stressed his creative primacy in the projects they worked on and downplayed the input of the director, while Iñárritu underplayed Arriaga’s contribution after Amores perros. Finally, during the making of Babel, these tensions came to a head and their collaboration came to an acrimonious end over irreconcilably different notions of what we might term ‘creative credit’. This well-known collaboration, feud and separation tell a story of creative partnerships, film industry working practices, power plays and media manipulations. This article examines the public statements of the two men and explores their story. It also asks a series of questions that relate to their specific relationship, but also to broader power dynamics...

Nuevas perspectivas sobre la transnacionalidad del cine hispánico, 2016

Through a focus on La nina santa/The Holy Girl by Lucrecia Martel (2004) and XXY by Lucia Puenzo ... more Through a focus on La nina santa/The Holy Girl by Lucrecia Martel (2004) and XXY by Lucia Puenzo (2007), this chapter examines the relationship between texts, sex and money. It considers theoretical approaches to European funding programmes and world cinema, and argues that a number of European production companies have created spaces for queer cinema that has proven beneficial to a range of Latin American films and has coincided with a boom in films directed by women. The article focuses on two new powerful protagonists, Amalia, Martel’s holy girl, and Puenzo’s Alex, an intersex teenager, who both bring new gazes and new forms of representation to global screens. The study is concerned with the ways in which certain film languages can be used to address an implied international art cinema spectator to make queerness part of our filmic conversation with texts, and the ways in which these languages engage with new modernities emerging through the reconfigurations of new queer families.

Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, 2015

Screen, 2018

We are in an age of multiple digital platforms where our entertainment, news, work, social life a... more We are in an age of multiple digital platforms where our entertainment, news, work, social life and social activism are conducted through our smart phones, tablets, laptops or desktop computers, or most probably a range of these simultaneously. This has significant consequences for our understanding of the primacy of certain texts over others, and leads to a dismantling of hierarchies relating to films and their paratexts. In this article I focus on a specific social issuemigration from Central America and Mexico to the United Statesand the texts that engage with this issue. The main case study is the activist project behind the film Who is Dayani Cristal? (Marc Silver, 2013), and I argue that the film and project are a salient example of an emerging new paradigm for the human rights documentary. In addition to the usual paratextual components of interviews with the filmmakers, focus on the star body (in this case that of Gael García Bernal), promotional material, and DVD extras, this is a film that broadens the scope of additional material to contain extra-textual activist, educational and community work, to the point that it destabilises the distinctions between core and surrounding texts. Who is Dayani Cristal? is a documentary that seeks to uncover the identity of a man who has died while making the dangerous journey through Mexico to the United States. This film is a particularly high profile example of an interactive human rights documentary thanks to the urgency of the issue it is chronicling, its star endorsement and, as we will see, the sophisticated extra-filmic advocacy work carried

Diogenes, 2016

Latin American women’s filmmaking has an unprecedented international profile thanks to the films ... more Latin American women’s filmmaking has an unprecedented international profile thanks to the films of the Peruvian director Claudia Llosa, and the Argentine directors Lucía Puenzo and Lucrecia Martel. What is frequently unacknowledged when discussing the work of these award-winning filmmakers is the fact that all of their films are co-productions with Europe, and that programmes such as Cinéfondation, a programme aligned with the Cannes film festival, the Hubert Bals Fund, the World Cinema Fund and Ibermedia have been instrumental in their production. This article will tell this story through a discussion of the work of Claudia Llosa with an introduction to the issues raised by her award winning festival film Madeinusa (2006), and a focus on La teta asustada/The Milk of Sorrow (2009 ). It will consider the arguments of theorists who critique what they see as neo-colonial European interventions in ‘world cinema’, and those who celebrate the enabling work of the funding bodies. The chap...

$Research paper thumbnail of (Trans) National Images and Cinematic Spaces: the cases of Alfonso Cuarón's \Y tu mamá también\ (2001) and Carlos Reygadas' \Japón\ (2002)$

Reygadas' films deal with the existential crisis of a city dweller in rural pre-modern Mexico in ... more Reygadas' films deal with the existential crisis of a city dweller in rural pre-modern Mexico in Japón, urban social and personal crises in Batalla en el cielo, and intimate portrayals of a marriage in crisis in the Mennonite community in Stellet Licht.

It is not uncommon for a director to move between modestly budgeted personal projects and larger-... more It is not uncommon for a director to move between modestly budgeted personal projects and larger-scale genre films. However, there is something both peculiar and provocative about the trajectory of Guillermo del Toro's career to date. This is not just to do with his leaping back and forth between Spanish-language "art-house" projects and English-language multiplex fare rather than proceeding from the former to the latter in what would be a more conventional mode of international career development. It also connects with del Toro's own repeated insistence in interviews and in DVD commentaries that for him all his films, be they in Spanish or in English, are personal projects. Perhaps most strikingly, the challenge offered by the shape of del Toro's career comes out of the way in which his films often confound or complicate distinctions between what we might think of as art cinema and genre cinema. After all, this is a director whose first feature, Cronos (1993), combined art-house and horror conventions and was shot partly in Spanish and partly in English. An interesting comparison can be made in this regard between del Toro and fellow Mexican filmmakers Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñárritu, whose careers, like that of del Toro, have encompassed Spanish-language projects (notably Cuarón's Mexican production Y tu mamá también in 2001 and Iñárritu's Amores perros

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 2018

The MIT Faculty has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you... more The MIT Faculty has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. Citation Chakravarty, Sourish et al. "Pharmacodynamic modeling of propofol-induced general anesthesia in young adults."

Transnational Cinemas, 2013

Women’s History Review, 2022

The three amigos, 2016

Nuevas perspectivas sobre la transnacionalidad del cine hispánico, 2016

Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, 2015

Screen, 2018

Diogenes, 2016

$Research paper thumbnail of (Trans) National Images and Cinematic Spaces: the cases of Alfonso Cuarón's \Y tu mamá también\ (2001) and Carlos Reygadas' \Japón\ (2002)$

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 2018

Transnational Cinemas, 2013

Latin American women filmmakers have achieved unprecedented international prominence in recent ye... more Latin American women filmmakers have achieved unprecedented international prominence in recent years. Notably political in their approach, figures such as Lucrecia Martel, Claudia Llosa and Bertha Navarro have produced innovative and often challenging films, enjoying global acclaim from critics and festival audiences alike. They undeniably mark a 'moment' for Latin American cinema. Bringing together distinguished scholars in the field-and prefaced by B. Ruby Rich-this is a much-needed account and analysis of the rise of female-led film in Latin America. Chapters detail the collaboration that tends to characterise its ethos-in many ways distinct from the largely masculine 'Third Cinema' auteurism which preceded it-as well as the transnational production contexts, unique aesthetics and socio-political landscape of the key industry figures. Through close attention to the particular features of national film cultures, from women's documentary filmmaking in Chile to comedic critique in Brazil, and from US Latino screen culture to the burgeoning popularity of Peruvian film, this timely study demonstrates the remarkable possibilities for film in the region.

The book will allow scholars and students of Latin American cinema and culture, as well as industry professionals, a deeper understanding of the emergence and impact of the filmmakers and their work, which has particular relevance for contemporary debates on feminism and postfeminism.

This book focuses on a selection of internationally known Latin American films. The chapters are ... more This book focuses on a selection of internationally known Latin American films. The chapters are organized around national categories, grounding the readings not only in the context of social and political conditions, but also in those of each national film industry. It is a very useful text for students of the region's cultural output, as well as for students of film studies who wish to learn more about the innovative and often controversial films discussed.

Providing a key resource to new students, Film: The Essential Study Guide introduces students to ... more Providing a key resource to new students, Film: The Essential Study Guide introduces students to all the skills they will need to learn tosucceed on a film studies course. This succinct, accessible guide covers key topics such as: Using the library Online research ...

Bulletin of Latin American Research, 1996

Celebrity Studies, 2010

Selena Quintanilla-Pérez (19711995) was a Mexican American singer who had a huge following among... more Selena Quintanilla-Pérez (19711995) was a Mexican American singer who had a huge following among the Latino communities in the United States and in Mexico. She was poised for cross-over success when she was shot in March 1995 by the president of her fan club, ...

This talk given at the University of Houston in April 2017 focuses on El laberinto del fauno/Pan’... more This talk given at the University of Houston in April 2017 focuses on El laberinto del fauno/Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), and how we might read it in 2017. It remains the most critically acclaimed film by Guillermo del Toro and is still considered to be ground-breaking. This paper considers what was new about this film, why it was so significant and discusses its legacy. How might we reconsider its value in an age of neo-fascism

In this talk I aim to present an overview of the historical shifts of the transnational in film s... more In this talk I aim to present an overview of the historical shifts of the transnational in film studies, and consider the ways in which the discipline has responded to developments in the social sciences. In the talk I outline the key areas of focus in what I refer to as the first phase of transnational cinema studies. These are: migration and cinema and exilic and diasporic filmmaking; transnationalizing readings of national and regional cinema; historical readings of transnational cinema; and film festival studies. Following this, I discuss some of the strengths and limitations in attempting to categorize and assess scales of transnationality in film production. The final section of the talk presents an overview of the second phase of transnational film studies, and considers the expanded reach of the transnational to the many fields that make up the discipline.

Paper given for 9th Annual Directors Symposium on Alejandro González Iñárritu - organised by Dolo... more Paper given for 9th Annual Directors Symposium on Alejandro González Iñárritu - organised by Dolores Tierney and podcast created by Catherine Grant
(pun from title stolen from Aníbal Santiago article in Chilango) –

The famous collaboration, feud and ultimate split between Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guillermo Arriaga, the screenwriter with whom he worked for his first 3 films, tells a story of creative partnerships, competing egos, working practices in the film industry, power plays and media manipulations. This paper explores these dynamics through an exploration of public statements made by both men and use them and the evolution of the relationship to ask: What we can draw from this beyond gossipy titillation? What can it tell us about public discourses of auteurism and its construction? What is the role of the screenwriter and his/her chances of achieving an auteurist status?

Estudios hispánicos en el contexto global, 2021

Latin American Cinema, Beyond the Festival Film: Funding, Aesthetics and Debates Deborah Shaw ... more Latin American Cinema, Beyond the Festival Film: Funding, Aesthetics and Debates

Deborah Shaw
Forthcoming 2019 Latin American Cinema: Film Funding, Film Festivals, Debates and Aesthetics (in Spanish ) Estudios hispánicos en el contexto global“ Peter Lang, Matthias Hausmann and Jörg Türschmann (Eds.)
English language version

Abstract
This chapter will consider the new funding landscapes for Latin American filmmakers with a focus on European funding bodies and will ask whether these have created new forms of dependence or new partnerships. European social funding bodies aligned with film festivals, have been instrumental through their support in developing the careers of some of the most high profile auteurist contemporary Latin American filmmakers. Latin American directors have been favoured by the Dutch Hubert Bals Fund, the German World Cinema Fund, and Cinéfondation a programme linked to the Cannes film festival.
This chapter will outline key debates relating to the political and social implications of this new funding landscape. It will examine the arguments of those who are critical and those who are supportive of these developments and drawing on examples of films from the above-mentioned directors will ask whether relationships between funding bodies and filmmakers create new forms of dependence or new partnerships. In addition, the chapter identifies categories of films that are funded (slow or poetic cinema, popular art cinema and social realist/ cinema), and examines the cinematic languages of these categories.

Estudios hispánicos en el contexto global, 2019

Latin American Cinema, Beyond the Festival Film: Funding, Aesthetics and Debates Deborah Shaw F... more Latin American Cinema, Beyond the Festival Film: Funding, Aesthetics and Debates

Deborah Shaw
Forthcoming 2019 Latin American Cinema: Film Funding, Film Festivals, Debates and Aesthetics (in Spanish ) , Peter Lang, Matthias Hausmann and Jörg Türschmann (Eds.)
English language version

Latin American Women Filmmakers: Production, Politics, Poetics, co-edited with Deborah Martin for the World Cinema Series at I.B.Tauris, 2017

There have been a number of Latin American feature films that have travelled through the transnat... more There have been a number of Latin American feature films that have travelled through the transnational circuits of film exhibition and distribution with the relationship between mistresses, masters and servants at their centre. This focus allows cinephiles around the world a voyeuristic insight into the private spaces and fictional homes of far away protagonists (if viewed from foreign metropolises as the films often are). Both male and female Latin American directors are making films that comment on the power relations between the ruling and servant classes, and use this relationship to share their observations on wider social/national class paradigms. Nonetheless, this subject matter has been of particular interest to female directors, and it is significant that this has coincided with the rise in women filmmakers on the global stage, the focus of this collection. This relationship is central to Latin American social and class relations, and Shireen Ally draws attention to the discomforting presence of the maid for many feminists (2015: 40), as the liberation of one social group is often conditional on the subjugation of another. This is particularly pertinent in a region (Latin America and the Caribbean) 'with the largest proportion of domestic workers' in the world (Higman 2015: 33). Patricia White also draws attention to the rise in transnational

This chapter aims to present an overview of the history of the transnational in film studies, and... more This chapter aims to present an overview of the history of the transnational in film studies, and consider the ways in which the discipline has responded to developments in the social sciences following a transnational momentum in film studies from 2005, with the following years seeing a number of conceptual and theoretical essays and edited volumes and the founding of a journal, Transnational Cinemas in 2010. It outlines the key areas of focus in the first phase of transnational cinema studies: migration and cinema and exilic and diasporic filmmaking; transnationalising readings of national and regional cinema; historical readings of transnational cinema; and film festival studies. Following this, the chapter discusses approaches to transnational film theory through an analysis of a selection of definitional essays on the subject. The final section of the chapter presents an overview of the second phase of transnational film studies, and considers the expanded reach of the transnational to the many fields that make up the discipline.

The Conversation, 2019

With the popularity of long-play TV series booming, are films “too short” now to allow the kind o... more With the popularity of long-play TV series booming, are films “too short” now to allow the kind of plot and character development that we have become used to? In our changing world of media, does the distinction between “TV series” and “film” even make sense?

In a recent class, when I asked my film studies students who had watched the set film for the week only a few hands went up – and my heart sank. Searching for an explanation, I asked who had watched the latest episode of the popular Netflix show Stranger Things. Nearly every hand went up.

Can cinema survive in a golden age of serial tv?
Deborah Shaw article in The Conversation

https://theconversation.com/can-cinema-survive-in-a-golden-age-of-serial-tv-122234

What does this anecdote reveal about changing viewing habits? Does the fact that even film students prefer the latest streaming series to the classic films set as coursework serve to illustrate the point that cinema is dying?

There is no doubt of the enormous appeal of the many long-form series .....

The Conversation and Reprinted in The Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/how-frida-kahlo-became-a-trinket-for-a-conservative-leader-a7990941.html, 2017

Theresa May's party leader speech at the Conservative conference on October 4 was noteworthy for ... more Theresa May's party leader speech at the Conservative conference on October 4 was noteworthy for all the wrong reasons. As Kenzie Bryant noted in Vanity Fair, it became a speech about " a cough, a merry prankster, a bracelet ". The fact that May was wearing a bracelet made up of miniature portraits of Frida Kahlo has become one of the major talking points of the speech. Many Kahlo fans will be delighted that this important Mexican artist has gained more exposure from the storm generated by May's fashion statement. Nonetheless, it raises some interesting issues about the transformation and co-opting of radical leftist artists who achieve a certain degree of success.

Like all minority communities LGBT communities are personally invested in media images and the qu... more Like all minority communities LGBT communities are personally invested in media images and the question of who controls these images. The first mainstream US (but internationally distributed) lesbian television series The L Word (2004-2009) thus experienced a burden of representation which it carried with style and success. Nonetheless, there are those in the lesbian community who criticise the series for being too glamorous and for its representations of class, ethnicity and trans identities.

The article will ask why the show mattered then and why it matters now. I will consider the cultural and social impact of the series, and the ways in which it presented a series of firsts that other television series have built on. It was the first mainstream series to feature lesbians, and attractive lesbians with aspirational lifestyles; it was the first to feature a biracial lesbian couple who conceive a child through insemination; it was the first to attempt a sympathetic portrayal of transgender experience in a sustained way. I will consider the way that positive and negative responses to the series reboot speaks to the ways that cultural artefacts impact on our lives and help shape our identities.

http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-central-america-movies-immigration-553004 Anti-migran... more http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-central-america-movies-immigration-553004

Anti-migrant rhetoric is not new in the United States; it has long been a staple of the Republican right and more recently the alt-right. It was a controversial focal point in the Donald Trump campaign of 2016, with Trump calling Mexicans drug dealers, criminals and rapists, and encouraging supporters to cheer his promise to build a wall – something that he has now signed an executive order on.

This migrant-baiting is increasing despite the fact that there has been a decline in migration from Mexico due to improvements in the Mexican economy, family reunifications, and the dangers of the migration journey.

What anti-migrant rhetoric also ignores is the fact that many who are still making the perilous journey from Central America and Mexico to the United States are driven by desperation at extremely high levels of violence and poverty, and have been categorised as refugees by organisations such as Amnesty International and the United Nations’ refugee agency (UNHCR).

Filmmakers from the region and those sympathetic to the plight of Mexican and Central American migrants are using their films to counter the misinformation, scapegoating and xenophobia that migrants have been subject to. The surge in anti-migrant rhetoric in recent years has been accompanied by a surge in films on the subject, to the extent that we can talk of a new sub-genre of migration films from the region.

These films can serve a useful role in countering negative representations of migrant-refugees. Film has a particular ability to assign worth. This is an even more urgent endeavour when we consider that the experiences of actual migrant-refugees are so often absent in political and media discourses.

The new season of Netflix hit Orange is the New Black has a lot to live up to. The exhilarating ... more The new season of Netflix hit Orange is the New Black has a lot to live up to. The exhilarating mix of comedy and drama set in a women’s prison was the first of Netflix’s original series to exhalt diversity in its cast and storylines, and has proven to be one of the streaming service’s most successful shows.
Now in its fifth series, OiTNB, as it is often referred to, offers a very different vision of US society to what has previously appeared on our screens. The cast features Latina, Asian, and black women, as well as white supremacists, and liberal white women, all of whom have fallen on hard times. The show demonstrates that a focus on marginalised communities can have broad appeal, and offers a vision of US society at odds with Hollywood whitewashing.
Since it first appeared in 2013, OiTNB has highlighted key social issues, including transgender rights, inter-ethnic conflicts, queer identities, mental illness and drug addiction. Each has been treated in such a way that the episodes are never didactic or dull. The show is compelling and tragicomic, exploring extraordinary depths of character, transcending the ethnic, sexual and class divides that separate incarcerated women from audiences on the outside.

Patricio Guzmán: fierce filmmaker who chronicled 50 years of Chile’s history after Pinochet coup, 2023

Interviews by Austin Fisher and Iain Robert Smith 'For this roundtable we approached a number of... more Interviews by Austin Fisher and Iain Robert Smith
'For this roundtable we approached a number of leading scholars who have published on the topic and invited them to answer five questions that speak to the current discourses on cinematic transnationalism. We hope that this intervention might help us move beyond the theoretical impasse that Hjort identified above, and, ultimately, help produce more rigorous and nuanced scholarship on transnational cinemas, as well as generating a valuable resource for teaching in the field'.

auteuse theory: a blog on women's cinema

Deborah Martin and Deborah Shaw Interview with Julia Solomonoff on her film The Last Summer of L... more Deborah Martin and Deborah Shaw Interview with Julia Solomonoff on her film The Last Summer of La Boyita

This chapter will consider the new funding landscapes for Latin American filmmakers with a focus ... more This chapter will consider the new funding landscapes for Latin American filmmakers with a focus on European funding bodies and will ask whether these have created new forms of dependence or new partnerships. European social funding bodies aligned with film festivals, have been instrumental through their support in developing the careers of some of the most high profile auteurist contemporary Latin American filmmakers. Latin American directors have been favoured by the Dutch Hubert Bals Fund, the German World Cinema Fund, and Cinéfondation a programme linked to the Cannes film festival. This chapter will outline key debates relating to the political and social implications of this new funding landscape. It will examine the arguments of those who are critical and those who are supportive of these developments and drawing on examples of films from the above-mentioned directors will ask whether relationships between funding bodies and filmmakers create new forms of dependence or new partnerships. In addition, the chapter identifies categories of films that are funded (slow or poetic cinema, popular art cinema and social realist/ cinema), and examines the cinematic languages of these categories. _____________________________________________________________________ Any attentive Latin America film aficionada/o watching the latest breakthrough 'festival film' in his/her local art cinema, whether that be in Buenos Aires, New York, Sydney, Paris or Portsmouth, will spot a recurrent pattern when reading the opening credits. They will see that the celebrated Argentine, Mexican, Brazilian, Chilean, Colombian, or Peruvian film that has done the near impossible by securing a cinema release in selected theatres in the nearest urban center, features an array of transnational public and private production funds. These co-produced films are likely to have received support from a range of funding bodies in Germany, the Netherlands, France, Spain, and perhaps Norway, or a combination of these, with some state funds from the filmmaker's own country. 1 Nonetheless, many in the audience will remain happily untouched by this production landscape and will be satisfied with having seen an interesting Latin American film convinced by its specific national 'authenticity'. Likewise, many students dutifully watching films on their world cinema or Latin American cinema modules may take the key texts selected by their tutors as national cultural artifacts, without engaging with the transnational production and distribution mechanisms (depending, of course, on how this is framed in the module). And, why would this be any different? The opening and closing credits are not the most interesting part of a film; in fact, most people start to pay attention once they finish, and leave when they signal that the main narrative has just ended. Nonetheless, there is another largely untold story hiding in the credits, and the inextricable relationship between film text and production context does, in fact, raise many interesting questions, some of which this chapter seeks to explore.